Rats, just like a whole host of other wild animals, can cause a serious amount of damage when left to their own devices. The attic is often one of the most hardest hit spaces, a place in your home that is seldom disrupted, warm, dry, and quite easy to break into. When was the last time you performed an inspection around your home that helped you to identify problem spots that could enable a wild critter to get inside?
Rats will chew and gnaw through any material put in their way. If there is electrical wiring, they will chew right through it. If you have rats in your garage, for example, the rats can easily crawl through essential wiring in your vehicle. There HAVE been cases where rats have chewed through brake cables, cables that are necessary for a car to start, and much more. This is obviously very dangerous, and is just one reason why you should make sure there aren't any rats in the garage as well as the attic and other areas of your home.
Nothing will be safe in your attic. The insulation, for example, will be chomped through, torn apart, and used as nesting and bedding material. The electrical wiring will not be safe, and as well as causing power outages, could even pose a serious fire hazard to your home also. These are all things that will need to repaired after the rats have been removed, and as we've said before, the repair bill can come into the thousands if the problem has been present for a rather long time.
Let's go back to that insulation for a moment though. The insulation of your home is meant to protect your home - keeping the warm air in during the winter, and the hot air out during the summer so that the air conditioning works and it's a bearable temperature. When you take away that insulation, or rather, when the rats take away that insulation, you will be losing hot air during the cold weather, and losing the cool air during the hot too. That will increase your utility bills, and that's before you get into the realms of how much it could cost to re-insulate your home.
Moving on from the insulation, and we have a poo and pee problem. These rats need to go to the bathroom somewhere, and they just so have a habit of doing it as they run around. Both urine and feces come with bacterial threats, and also a very serious danger of disease-spreading too, and it'll soon start to smell bad, especially when the warmer weather comes back around.
When the rats steal your pets food, bacteria could be passed onto your pets, making them very ill indeed. The rats will also cause damage by trying to break into your home also, and finding multiple points of entry. Small holes will be made much bigger with sharp teeth and claws, and that'll open the way for other, larger wild animals to invade too. That's before you start to investigate the flies and maggots that these rats - their waste matter and decomposing bodies - also attract.
To say that rats could cause a lot of damage is definitely an understatement. It has been reported that over $500 million worth of damage is done across US homes every year because of rats, and we would definitely recommend taking a peek around tonight to make sure you won't be another homeowner to add to that statistic.
Go back to the Rats in the Attic home page.
Read more educational guides I wrote:
Do rats hide from humans?
How to get free rat removal
How to find and remove a dead rat
What should I do if I find a nest of rats in the attic?
When rats get into your attic, they can cause some major damage. You may not even notice them at first but then suddenly, you start seeing their droppings on everything when you go into the attic to retrieve something. It doesn’t take them long to not only take over the attic but cause significant damage that will end up costing you a lot of money.
Feces everywhere
Because they don’t care where they use the bathroom, you will find rat droppings everywhere and anywhere in the attic. If there is one rat, you won’t see as much feces, but you will see some. It seems like they defecate all the time. Their urine also has a very pungent odor to it that you can smell when you are close to the rat’s home. When you see feces, don’t touch it with your bare hands. Wait until you have rubber gloves to pick it up and clean the area.
Rats do carry diseases and sometimes these diseases can be transferred through their feces. These diseases are literally passed on through the feces of the rat that has the disease. They can then be transmitted to the human making direct contact with the feces by way of a cut on the finger or a break in the skin.
Wires that are chewed on
Rats are really bad at chewing on wires that are running throughout your home. Rats are constantly chewing on everything in order to build their nest and create a safe living space. The danger comes when the rat chews on the wires up in the attic. You may only go up to the attic about two times a year. Once the rat chews at a certain spot in the wire, your wires are now exposed and vulnerable. When you turn a high powered appliance on such as the air conditioning unit, it may heat the wires up enough to cause them to spark or if they are sitting close to something that could start a fire, then it can start before you realize what is happening.
Insulation in your walls
Rats are home builders and they work constantly to improve their living space. They chew on things that they feel that they can use to lay on. One thing that attracts their attention is the insulation you have in your walls. If you have insulation exposed in the walls of the attic, the rat that just got into your home will use that insulation by chewing and gnawing until it gets enough in their mouth to take to their nesting spot. It may take them a while, but they will consistently work on building their nest in order to be comfortable.
If you suspect that a rat has made their way into your attic, you may want to call a professional to come and remove it in the best way they can.
